He nodded, smiling; and his frankness evidently pleased her, for she nodded back. “That’s right; no use to lie about it. I knew I had seen your face somewhere. How did you get away?”
“That is the one thing I cannot tell you, good mother, for it would implicate the man who helped me, and not even for your favour—though God knows I want it bad enough—will I betray my friend.”
“Right again; hold fast to the man who holds to you; I like to see folk grateful.”
Then he told her how he wanted to go in her boat to the Jersey shore, and how it was he happened to know her plans. But she shook her head; the risk was too great.
“There will be no risk at all. You are so well known to the soldiers at the different posts that you will never be questioned. It would be but natural for you to take some one stronger than your boys to help you in making so long a voyage. Find me but a coat and hat, and no one will give me a thought, for I know how to hold my tongue when occasion calls.”
But still she refused. Her passport called but for three, and she was not going to run her head into a noose for all his fine speeches and petting ways—for he had squeezed her hand and patted her gray hair while he talked.
He would not listen to her refusal; if she did not take him, he was lost. And he got hold of her other hand, and in pathetic words described to her the agony he had suffered on the vessel; and then he dropped his head on the table and almost sobbed as he told her of Joscelyn and his yearning to see her.
“Oho, a sweetheart, is it?” asked the old woman, with aroused interest.
“Yes, as bonny a girl as you ever set eyes upon. And think you, good dame, of your own young days, of the time when the lads were at your beck and call,—for I warrant me those blue eyes broke many hearts,—would you not have been grateful if your lover had been in peril and some one had saved him for you?”
The dame chuckled. “Ay, ay, I had my fling with the lads, I did.”